


take this sinking boat and point it home

by northerndavvn



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Gen, first entry picks up at his high school graduation, it just keeps going from there i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-02-26 02:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2635373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerndavvn/pseuds/northerndavvn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever else he was, he had a story behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. beginning

**Author's Note:**

> i thought the movie itself was mediocre at best but of course my favorite character was callaghan
> 
> (gotta thirst after the ossans, after all)
> 
> ok but real talk, he was very interesting to me??? he is what hiro could have been, if hiro let his need for revenge take him much further. and of course i started thinking, what happened to this man to make him so desperate for his daughter back???? he was successful and intelligent and renowned- what about his other family?? and i just. rip callaghan.
> 
> so basically it's. kind of a back-story i guess, that picks up right at he's graduating high school and kind of jumps forward.
> 
> this is a series of prompted drabbles from a 30 day challenge. the title is from the song "falling slowly" by glen hansard.

He wasn't a genius or anything.

Okay, sure- he was pretty good at building things, and the intricacies of high-level mathematics and programming were like child's play, and  _maybe_ he'd gotten a scholarship or five to some of the best robotics universities in the country, but still. He wasn't a genius, just a kid with too much time on his hands that played with spare junk in his parents' garage.

His hands shake and his voice wavers as he gives his speech, his stomach tied into knots, but the audience applauds nonetheless and his father claps him hard on the back and his mother's smile is so very, very bright. She leans down to speak in his ear, voice pitched to be heard.

_"I'm so, so proud of you, Robert."_


	2. horology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> horology   
>  \ haw-ROL-uh-jee, hoh- \ , noun;   
> 1\. the art or science of making timepieces or of measuring time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont know where im going with this

The next up and coming in robotics, the darling of the science department, little genius of San Fransokyo. They called him a prodigy and Robert scowled and hunched his shoulders, but that didn't stop him from excelling in his classes- and more. 

The realm of robotics was a new, rarely-explored science, full of endless possibilities. It was the future, this he knew, which was only part of the reason he invested his time in it. If he made some sort of new breakthrough, if he made a difference in this revolutionary field, he would be a very important man indeed.

He also just liked working with all the parts. 

It'd started with watches, when he was younger; his father had a collection of antique pocket watches that he would take out and parade around, teaching Robert how to properly care and clean for them. The tiny machines had seemed positively ancient at the time, and yet they still worked; he'd wanted to know  _why._ Each microscopic part came together as a part of something bigger, came together to create a whole, all at his hands.   
  
( _Careful,_ he tells himself, wryly,  _you'll pick up a bit of a God-complex if you keep going on like that._ )


	3. colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amaranth and russet and the blush-pink of her cheeks, all on a backdrop of icy cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im really quite fond of elyse, who is of my own invention 8) 
> 
> have an extra update because dragon age: inquisition is gonna be here tomorrow and i will probably disappear

Like all great men, Robert was prone to bouts of brooding.

Not often, no- just periodic downturns, times when he hit a wall with everything he tried to do, from working through formulas to drafting his thesis. The cold, he'd discovered, helped him to think, and when he'd gotten sick of his ever-rising heating bill, he'd taken to quick walks around the campus, in the snow.

There was rarely anyone out during these little jaunts, of course; they were always very late or very early, always when he got frustrated enough to tear out his own hair, when the waste basket by his desk was overflowing with crumpled papers covered in phrases and equations and half-sketched designs.

And then, she was there.

It was a gradual change, one he didn't entirely notice at first. He'd come out in the mornings and stare musingly at the sky, warming with the first light of dawn, and she had been hurrying along, her coat a bright pink, brown curls tumbling over her shoulders. Robert hand't paid her much attention at the time- this was  _his_ escape, damn anyone else- but she just kept appearing, in the mornings, never seeming to notice.

But he noticed her.

He _noticed_ how her cheeks were chapped by the cold above her endearingly checkered scarf, how her nose pinked and she squinted through her glasses; he  _noticed_ how her boots scuffed along the same path every day, churning through snow that had accumulated the night before; he'd  _noticed_ how her arms were always full of this or that, and how she never dropped any of it.

For all of his  _noticing,_ though, he was completely taken aback when  _she_ noticed  _him._

"You're sitting here every morning. Aren't you cold?"


	4. pillar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> breathe in, breathe out. the nicotine takes care of the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy SHIT im so sorry this took so long (if anyone even reads this??) anyway hi i've been in dragon age hell and now i've been banned from video games because i have strep throat and im not allowed to contaminate the loft

His hands shake as he lights the cigarette, sucks in a long drag of smoke before breathing out.

It's not healthy, and Elyse scolds him about it near daily, but it helps. Helps him cope. He can feel his shoulders sagging under the stress of- well, everything. There are several engineering firms vying for his attention, offering their patronage, and he's still not sure, has no more idea what he wants to do with his life than that boy tinkering in his parents' garage. 

Breathe in, breathe out. 

Robert knows he's a genius, but only though what others have told him- the praise for his inventions and his theories, heralding them as revolutionary and titling him the  _brightest of our age._ It was a heavy title to live up to, and he wasn't sure he could.

Elyse would sometimes let herself into his cramped little apartment and join him on the balcony, lighting his cigarette for him when his hands were too unsteady to do so. She looks disapproving the entire time, her glasses riding low on her nose as she peers at him over the rims, but that doesn't matter- what matters is that she's  _there_ , and that when her fingers brush his, the weight on his shoulders gets just a little bit lighter. 


	5. indemnify

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> his life was his own and his actions were his to govern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i contaminated the loft. in the past weeks just about everyone in the house has come down with strep throat. god bless.
> 
> that aside, it's been a rough few weeks as well, due to dips in my own mental health. as with everything, this is a vent piece close to my heart, seeing as i've been struggling with a crisis of faith, as well.

For the first time since he was a child, Robert prayed. 

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

His knees ached and his shoulders burned and his hands shook from the force he used to squeeze them together in a white-knuckled grip. It was harder than it had been years ago: his mind was wired differently, now. Where once there had been words, impulses, there was now just lines of code, stringing together to create commands and processes. He was more like the machines he worked with and less like a person.

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

He'd never been particularly religious- neither had his parents- and the idea of a supreme being just seemed ridiculous. The world was governed by those who lived there, by logic, by cause and effect. Science, by laws and theories both known and unknown, things easily understandable and easily proven. He'd never needed to  _pray-_ had never needed the succor that a predestined fate afforded. His life was his own and his actions were his to govern.

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

It was easy to understand why someone would seek that sort of comfort, though. When the world got to be too much, when things weighed too heavily on your shoulders, it was easiest to believe that it was all part of some master plan, some sort of preordained schematic of your life and cause and effect. That things would turn out exactly how they needed to be, no matter what you did or did not do.

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

For the first time in a long time, he needed that sort of guidance.

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

For the first time in a long time, Robert was unsure.


End file.
